open source systems for libraries

C

from freshmeat: "RefDB is a reference database and bibliography tool for DocBook SGML and XML documents. This is an attempt to provide most of the functionality of commercial packages like Reference Manager or EndNote in a platform-independent tool, targeting DocBook rather than word processors." This version's changes include bugfixes, build improvements, better error reporting and output.

This came out about a month ago, must have missed it. From the g3data site: "g3data is used for extracting data from graphs. In publications graphs often are included, but the actual data is missing. g3data makes the extracting process much easier." Very, very slick, and while it's a niche application there will likely be a moment each of you will need this upon encountering a frustrated researcher on deadline at the reference desk. Reminds me of registering datapoints on old maps using GIS.

from freshmeat: "g3data is a program for extracting data from graphs (i.e., scanned graphs from scientific publications). It can read many different image formats and outputs the extracted data through stdout." Way cool; any sense of how many researchers are doing this kind of data reanimation?

to excerpt Eric: "Features of 1.2 include: moved staff module from a Perl codebase to C codebase... This will enable us to make a future release an Ariel "plug-in"; added ability to attach pdf documents to an email message rather than posting them to the Web; added Alphabetical sorting to user list database; fixed bugs in TIFF/PDF conversion and other interface problems; [many] changes in server scripts." check it out yourself at the Prospero page at the Prior Health Sciences Library. Very cool; now I can reimplement it here.

Robert writes in: "There is rather good support for basic ISIS software (unfortunately they seem to be moving towards MS Windows) but it is very difficult to get free software (also free of charge) for constructing CGI. So I wrote my free iAPI (in C) to help others deal with problems I had before with ISIS." it's licensed under the GNU GPL...